


A Country Council of County Ladies

by EllynNeverSweet



Series: Certain Arts and Allurements [2]
Category: AUSTEN Jane - Works, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: AU, Daemons, Family Drama, Fitzwilliam Darcy: precious hothoused (former) only child who Doesn't Know How To Play, Gen, Lady Anne: literal tiger mother, One-Shot, Politics, Prequel, Worldbuilding, all your faves are children, child!Darcy, come for the christening stay for the airing of family greivances, daemons AU, magical history au, multiple characters sharing the same name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22031848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllynNeverSweet/pseuds/EllynNeverSweet
Summary: The baptism of Miss Georgiana Darcy provides an opportunity for the grand dames of Georgian politics (wives and daughters of Earls, to a one) to get together to talk shop and plan their children's futures.A one-shot prequel to the main fic ofCertain Arts and Allurements, featuring three Georgianas, two Harriets, two Annes, two Carolines, two Williams, two Georges, one Catherine, and a very overwhelmed eleven year old Fitzwilliam Darcy (and his daemon).
Relationships: Fitzwilliam Darcy & Georgiana Darcy, Lady Anne Darcy & Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Lady Anne Darcy & her children
Series: Certain Arts and Allurements [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1456996
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	A Country Council of County Ladies

  


Some years ago in the countryside of Derbyshire there was a chapel of some antiquity, dating, perhaps, to the Norman conquest in its oldest parts. It was of the Northern style, which is to say that the new work as well as the old was adorned with carvings of saints and wondrous chimeras, and the tower was disproportionately large in comparison to the nave, accomodating the local preference for as great a quantity of bells as possible. This had been perhaps three at the time of construction, but the tower had been rebuilt perhaps a century before the date of the events here related, using stone taken from the ruined priory, in order to accomodate a an additional six. A configuration of nine bells had become popular in the northern part of the country in the late seventeenth century when the fashion for method ringing had first developed, nine bells being calculated as the number theoretically needed to ring an extent of every possible permutation of tones continuously from one sabbath to the next. This configuration was considered a little jarring by visitors from that part of England south of the river Trent, who were accustomed to peals of six or eight bells, and often found the ninth note jarring and uncanny. Not far distant lay a series of closes, which the observant eye might have detected lay in the same configuration as cells which had once housed nuns, in which new lambs and their mothers would be kept in the spring under the gaze of the deer-faced gargoyles which sprouted from the chapel walls.

Outside the chapel, quite overspilling the rounded drive of the churchyard, stood a long row of carriages, large as stagecoaches but designed to accomodate only two or three persons apiece. The two closest to the church door bore ducal coronets and sprays of ostrich feathers. Immediately before these, rounding the turn and scarcely more modest in its livery, stood a carriage which bore the arms of the church’s patron in a fresh-painted echo of the antique stone finery. Beyond these three was the array of arms usually found in the train of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire when they stayed at their home of Chatsworth, this collection of distinguished persons having gathered some hours earlier at their host’s home in anticipation of a new member of their congregation.

As the weather continued fine, though it was rather late in the year, it had initially been agreed upon that the party would walk to church, this being a distance of scarcely half a mile through pleasant parkland from Pemberley House. After somefurther discussion that morning, however, it had been decided that the party ought to travel to and from the church by carriage after all, as the Duke — who had for some years suffered attacks of gout that caused his great python dæmon to writhe alarmingly and require transportation within a silk palanquin while he travelled in a twin contraption— had made clear his preference for travelling with greater ease than he considered possible by foot. The caravan had therefore been assembled with as great a haste as could be managed when obliging any number of coach-horses to leave the warm and comfortable boxes they had so recently been installed in. This, in turn, had made the party late, but as the rector could hardly complain to his patron of this when he was that day baptising that same gentleman’s child, and in any case very nearly the whole congregation on that occasion consisted of the infant’s extended family, the sole consequence of this decision was that the sermon had been revised again and was consequently overworked and lengthy.

The Autocephalous Church of Northern England, usually known simply as the Church of the North, was one of those chimerical institutions that had been established during the reign of John Uskglass, and had persisted in varying degrees of confusion and disarray into the modern world, tailored and patched about the edges to suit changes in philosophy and fashion but unable to dissolve or reform itself in the absence of a possibly still-extant authority. Too fond of saints and gaudy in its habits for the protestant sects, and too heretical in its tenets regarding magic and the existence of fantastic beings for the Catholic and Orthodox churches, it had persisted in something like the shared beliefs of the extended church, adopting relics and reform prayer books with equal favour, and yet it was never quite one thing or the other. The protestant Tudors, after some grumbling, had eventually come to the conclusion in the sensible person of Elizabeth that as the church itself proclaimed each of its bishoprics independent of any governing head higher than the locally mitred ones, and those persons too frequently devolved into squabbling to form a united front,it might be assumed that the Church of the North would follow where the head of the Church of England lead in public, so long as it was permitted to worship more or less as it had always done in private. The ceremony of baptism, however, had the pleasant advantage of being both of sufficient frequency and antiquity that the rites could be easily followed regardless of any differences of habit between the regular congregation and such visitors as might be expected. Such was the case on this occasion. The rite, with the notable local addition of ‘fairies and spirits of the air’ into the list of evil influences the adult participants ought shield the infant from, was enacted largely without confusion or error, although little delay ensued when the little girl’s namesake godmother, the Duchess, insisted with some embarrassment upon rearranging herself on the other side of the font, the better to shield her recently injured eye from both the blaze of candles which illuminated the chancel and the curious gaze of the less illustrious persons gathered within the nave. She had lately begun to claim relief at the freedom from vanity her scarring had given her, but the pride of a woman who had for some twenty years been regarded as the foremost beauty in society was not yet entirely extinguished.

The child was named Georgiana, for her first and noble godmother, and her dæmon was named Louis-Alexandre, for her maternal aunt and second godmother, in honour of that lady’s deceased husband and living dæmon. The french style of her daemon’s name she received from the traditions of her father’s family, as she did her surname, which was Darcy. 

Georgiana and her dæmon slept quite placidly for the duration of the service, and so her mother was able to look about with considerable satisfaction at the assembled personages who had been invited to celebrate her success in having at last produced a long-sought daughter. In addition to Lady Anne’s own brother, the Earl of Hartsworth, and his wife, their sister Lady Catherine had been honoured as godmother. Then there were, of course, the aforementioned ducal couple, who were distant relatives of Lady Anne’s husband, in the manner of families who have long been neighbours. Also present were the duchess’s mother, the Dowager Lady Spencer, her sister, the Countess of Bessborough, the duchess’s particular friend the Lady Elizabeth Foster, along with all their assembled children and charitable causes.

The younger children had been seated in the transept behind the pew holding the various parents and godparents, although the Viscount Risingham, who was two years shy of his majority, and the Viscount Duncannon, who was a few years younger, had both been regarded as sufficiently mature in age and manners to be allowed the freedom of the foremost pew. In the former case this was of some import, for Risingham had languidly remained behind on the manorial pew for the duration of the ceremony, the better for his tigress dæmon to flatten her ears warningly at the flock of children seated behind her. He himself meanwhile dandled his two year old brother Vivian, who seemed possessed of all the frantic energy his phlegmatic older brother lacked and continually sought escape, his dæmon clumsily attempting assistance in a hail of fledgling forms until she was gently pinned in both forepaws by the viscount’s dæmon. Duncannon, whose own dæmon had recently settled as an indifferently tan-coloured puma, was very upright and less active even than Risingham, shifting only to occasionally glance behind him at the whispers and muffled laughter emanating thence.

Behind them, Risingham’s brother Richard Fitzwilliam alternated between pulling faces for Vivian’s amusement, gossiping quietly with the two ducal daughters, the Ladies Georgiana and Harriet, their daemons shifting discreetly with the conversation, and quite ignoring his own cousin, Miss de Bourgh. He was steadily ignored in turn by their cousin Fitzwilliam Darcy, who watched with frowning attention the business of his new sister’s baptism, his dæmon  Inès having steadfastly adopted her preferred Sunday shape of a long-legged yearling lamb, after the fashion of those in the stained glass windows overhead which depicted St Agnes. Arrayed beside him were Duncannon’s three younger siblings, Frederick and William Ponsonby and their sister Lady Caroline, and by her, pinned thus against the wall in a manner less obvious but no less secure than that used to entrap the infant Vivian, was the young Marquess of Hartington, who had slid so far forward in his seat as to be almost horizontal, his dæmon occupying herself by becoming a blind snake which burrowed in and out of the collar and cuffs of his velvet suit whilst he kicked sullenly at the underside of the pew ahead.

The nave of the church held many more familiar faces, though somewhat less illustrious than the party gathered about the font. Mr and Mrs Wickham — his dæmon a clever, wiry deerhound, hers an extravagantly beribboned cat — sat in their usual pew, this position of honour guaranteed by Mr Wickham’s steady stewardship of the family estates. Their son George, who was a constant companion of Fitzwilliam on occasions less formal than this, sat beside them, and the other Chatsworth children — the ones the Duchess breezily and vaguely referred to as ‘our little pensioners’ or ‘the Duke’s godchildren’ — had been seated in the same row with their playmates’ tutors and nurses. Seated thus, side by side, little Miss St Jules and young Master Clifford seemed so familiar, each as plump, smiling and dark-haired as the other, that they might have been assumed to be brother and sister. Lady Elizabeth had said nothing on the subject of the seating plan when the children had been ushered away, but her cat dæmon had fluffed out his sooty hair until it stood on end and very much resembled her fashionable titus crop. He had remained that way the entirety of the service, though she herself had been all smiles and affability, and the Duke had once or twice seemed to glance warily at her.

The adults tarried a while afterwards, Mr Darcy making a special point of praising specifics of the rector’s sermon, and the children, having been released from their pews and reunited themselves without the regard for rank that had formerly separated them, formed a party of their own to conduct an exploratory tour of the chapel and its surrounds. This had been spearheaded by George Wickham, who had with no small degree of pleasure self-importantly declared that he had been promised the living of the church would one day be _his_ , and that therefore he ought to do the honours of relating its history and curious qualities. Fitzwilliam had agreed to this with an easy shrug, though on occasion he prompted or made some small correction, which George usually ignored.

Like many of the old northern churches dating from the reign of the Raven King, the chapel was said to be suffused with old magic as well as old history. Both of these proved to be an object of fascination to the Ponsonby children, for they had been provided with an Anglo-Irish politician for a father, who kept them often near London and the sort of respectable new churches found there which had not yet required the improvement or removal of their stonework, and Lady Caroline in particular found much to praise in prose that was both excessively high-flown and excessively loud.By contrast, Miss St Jules, who was also a Caroline, found more to criticise than to praise in the carvings and paintwork, for she had spent her earliest years in France with an array of noble guardians and and was accustomed to a greater degree of splendour in her observance of religion. The Cavendish children, who spent a full third of the year in close proximity to Pemberley, and who had already heard many of the local legends even if they had never seen evidence of them, affected a blasé attitude to the stories of the magic that had supposedly occurred there. Of greatest interest to them was the story of how the martyr Joan Waste had been brought there by her brother to seek sanctuary, the woman herself being blind and unable to travel unassisted. That story claimed that on receiving this appeal, the saints in the windows promised their protection, and proceeded to instruct the gargoyles to climb down and bar the doors to the agents of Queen Mary. The doors had stayed shut in this fashion for more than two years, until the children’s ancestress Bess of Hardwick, a needlewoman and magician favoured by Queen Elizabeth, had come down from her new house at Chatsworth upon the death of Mary and promised upon her favourite sewing needle that the new queen would not continue her sister’s persecutions, upon which point the doors had been unbarred, and Bess had left her needle in a jewellery box on the windowsill, where it still remained. 

Dearer to the host family, by virtue of its continuance into the present day, was the tale of how the magician Thomas Godbless had, in payment for accommodation at the priory one unusually cold spring, enchanted the bells to ring of their own accord whenever a lamb was lost from the fold or when occasions of particular note or danger were about to occur. This story resulted in the direction of sidelong skeptical looks from the Cavendish children, who conceded that it was no doubt very useful, but seemed easy enough to feign. Who could say it was not some trick of the rector and curate, in order to make their congregation pay proper attention? In any case, there were always occasions of note happening in great estates, so coincidence was to be expected.

George laughed agreeably at this, and winkingly promised that when the living came to him he would certainly share the secret with them. Lady Georgiana looked very blank at him, and her sister Lady Harriet scowled, her portly kitten dæmon spitting his displeasure from the crook of her elbow. Fitzwilliam looked really indignant and declared that it was certainly not a trick, for he had been woken up in the middle of the night by the bells a month before, when no-one would have been at the chapel, and at breakfast the next morning had been told he had a sister. This was certainly very interesting, although as Lady Georgiana, who was two years his senior, pointed out, it was not at all impossible that he had dreamt it. She was the oldest of her mother’s children, and with a look of mingled kindness and condescension explained that there had been so much talk each time about the new baby before they had arrived that she had been always thinking about them at those times, especially when her children had been forbidden from seeing the Duchess during her confinement and could only send letters.

At length Lady Anne, who was growing tired in the cold, bluntly suggested to her husband that she wished to return home, and she and her tiger dæmon settled themselves in her carriage with its wide platform seats, he curling his huge form about her back and providing a brace that she might rest her arm upon. Lady Catherine joined her, her own tiger dæmon draping himself comfortably along her sister’s in the habit that had persisted since childhood. The carriage was quickly warmed in this fashion, and Miss Darcy’s dæmon crawled out of his nest in her blanket, curling quizzically over her brow in the shape of a caterpillar. Lady Spencer, who had begun to be frail, willingly acquiesced to Lady Anne’s invitation to join them, her swan dæmon draping his long neck gratefully upon her shoulder as she settled herself.

An energetic conversation was taking place amongst the younger party, with many whispers between George and Fitzwilliam in particular, the latter’s expression happily triumphant. It was not at all a surprise, then, when Lady Anne’s son informed her through the carriage window that the children had one and all elected to walk back to the house, permission having already been summarily sought and granted from their various patriarchs in a break in the political gossip. Mr Darcy himself, busily talking with Mr Wickham, broke off his conversation to verify this in his calm way, pointing out that it was only natural for young people to want to take some exercise, and they were like to behave better for it that afternoon. He would go with them himself, since he had some matters to look in on that were on the way. His red doe dæmon, who disliked riding in carriages no matter how comfortable, had lingered as far away as she could comfortably manage, and the spring in his step almost matched hers as the foot party set off across the park, looking as much a part of the landscape as the trees themselves.

Lady Spencer followed Lady Anne’s resigned look, and, when both gentlemen and children were safely out of earshot, remarked, ‘if you will be guided by me, you will nip _that_ —‘ her swan dæmon gestured briefly but expressively out the window to where George was once again holding court, ‘in the bud while you still enjoy your boy’s entire confidence. ‘

The Countess of Bessborough, who had previously been standing by the carriage steps and taking part in the conversation, glanced nervously at her mother at this, and gathered up her rabbit dæmon, abruptly exclaiming that she had forgotten something urgent she wished to discuss with the Countess of Hartsworth, who was climbing into her carriage some way off.

Lady Anne confessed that she quite understood Lady Spencer’s meaning — she had often observed Lady Spencer’s distress at how the Duchess’s close patronage and friendship with Lady Elizabeth had taken such a peculiar turn — but she did not know the solution. There were too few boys about of the right age and rank to be a natural playmate for her son, and though Fitzwilliam was fond of Ponsonby children and his cousins when they met on such occasions as these, those boys were in the south far oftener than the Darcys, and the problem of some local companionship for the summer and harvest season could not thus be resolved. Lady Spencer, who was an advocate of modern education, suggested that period at a good public school might answer this problem — her own son had attended Harrow, and she had been well pleased by it. Having made some school friends, it would be a small enough step to invite two or three to stay during the time they preferred to live at Pemberley, and that company, with such a point of unity as shared school experience, would naturally lead to the desired distance, especially as there could be no question of a steward’s son following him to such an establishment. This was considered a very sensible proposal by both mother and aunt, the latter of whom put in that as Kent a good deal more convenient to London than was Derbyshire, she would be most happy to take her nephew as a guest at Rosings whenever that might be more convenient. Lady Anne was a little more reluctant on this point, for while _she_ had no objection to her sister’s care, she did not think her husband would not wish his heir to be too often absent.

This conversation continued the whole of the short drive to Pemberley House, breaking off only when Lady Anne was at last obliged to alight from the stopped carriage to welcome her guests once again, and make certain discreet enquiries as to the readiness of the planned refreshments. They retired to the salon, a place which Lady Anne had had the especial pleasure of reworking to her own design since her marriage, removing walls and adding windows so that the whole was considerably enlarged and enlightened from what it had been, transforming what was once a dim velvet warren of rooms of great and varied antiquity into a series of two or three long halls joined by glazed doors, the better to entertain in. Into this sparkling brightness came the ladies, settling themselves like jewels arrayed in a box, and parliament opened.

The Duchess of Devonshire led the conversation, having once again claimed the pleasure of holding her goddaughter with all the authority of a government minister raising a despatch box, her leopard dæmon lounging prettily at her side. Fate, having been stopped in the person of the duke from continuing the tradition of statesmanship in the Cavendish family, seemed to have diverted itself into his wife, who had first befriended the leaders of the Whig party and then transformed them into her loyal deputies. She had shown herself a woman of great ability almost since her earliest years, and could no more help herself from directing the flow of conversation than she could manage to control her purse. The conversation thus primarily turned upon matters of state, particularly which of Mr Pitt’s policies the ladies might encourage their sons, husbands and brothers to support or oppose, and the disappearanceof Mr Fox, who had all but removed himself from parliament after year upon year of leading an opposition more eager to scrap amongst themselves than tangle with the government. The Duchess was very fond of Mr Fox, and thought that this retirement was a grave error, though she certainly understood the desire to remove oneself from the judgement of the public from time to time.

Lady Anne gave a cool response to this, her opinion on the situation being rather different. Like the Duchess, Lady Anne had been born into a Whiggish family, but unlike the Duchess, she had not proceeded to marry into the party, and she had consequentially been obliged to acquire an understanding of the currents of politics as they applied in the North to the House of Commons, rather than to the House of Lords, and the facts as she saw them were that the present parlous state of the Whig party could only rightfully be laid at the door of Mr Fox, who had betrayed the long-held principles of the party which sought to limit the power of the monarch, and so disrupted the alliance which lay at the heart of Whig power. The core members of the party had been in varying degrees of accord with many of the northern gentlemen who controlled the so-called commoner barony seats almost since the foundation of the party, this uneasy agreement resting on the curious legal fiction which allowed those same gentlemen to control hereditary seats in the house of commons in the first place. The essence of the matter, though frequently complicated by the introduction of new causes to champion or condemn, was that the much of Northern England maintained that it never ceded sovereignty to Westminster, and that the Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian kings in whose name parliament ruled were in truth only the kings of Southern England, and merely acted in the position of the stewards of the absent Raven King. The landholders of the North, save for those granted titles in the sixteenth century re-seizure, had almost uniformly rejected the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660, which had formalised the abeyance of feudal tenure which had held sway during the Civil War into a permanent dismantling of any claims to peerage-by-tenure in the South of England. An argument had ensued between those Northern landholders whose estates included lands held _per baroniam,_ who declared that that parliament did not have the authority to dissolve the contracts between themselves and the Raven King, and that therefore they maintained the right to claim peerage and parliamentary seats on that basis, and the sitting members of the House of Lords, who maintained that if those northern gentlemen regarded themselves as not being bound by Acts of Parliament as their lands did not fall under its dominion, then it followed that they could not be entitled to sit in parliament, be they peers or commoners or even magicians.

The situation had eventually been resolved by an Act creating seperate ‘baronial borough’ seats in the House of Commons for all the baronies-by-tenure which could be identified between the Tweed and the Trent, in which suffrage was extended to the landholder of the estate and their descendants in the usual fashion of heirs and co-heiresses, so that those families, while not recognised as peers of the realm, nevertheless maintained the right of representing themselves in parliament. That cause had been championed by Charles II, who had greatly appreciated the injection of cash into his treasury immediately after his restoration that had resulted when various of those gentlemen had appeared at his court to present both themselves and the customary fee of a year’s income in order to formally take possession of their lands, an action which was in some cases a decade overdue as a result of the king’s exile. Since then, the position of the commoner barons had been that the restrictions placed on the monarch by parliament were largely in their interests, since he was, after all, merely representing their own king and should not be permitted to overreach, and as such when the parliamentary parties had begun to formalise themselves, it had been only natural for the sympathies of the commoner barons to lie with the Whigs. _That_ concord had been almost destroyed by Mr Fox’s insistence in ’88 on his friend the Prince of Wales assuming the position of regent through royal prerogative, and the consequent abandonment of formal alliance by the northern gentlemen, who had resigned the party en mass to declare themselves independents.

She had not time to explain all this with the proper deference, however, for just as the conversation was beginning to become heated the remainder of their party arrived, and the change of subject necessitatedby the arrival of the master of the house put a dampener on the debate. This arrival was preceded by Lady Anne’s instructions for the doors to be opened in anticipation, she having long ago learned to detect her husband’s arrival by the curious manner in which the estate responded to his presence. This phenomenon, so subtle that it went unnoticed by all those save the resident family, had at first startled her so badly she had flung herself upon a settee and refused to move for a full half-hour, until she had learned to expect it and almost ceased to consciously notice it. She had once thought it as being rather as if an earthquake might be managed without any movement, but later had come to understand it as something closer to the sound of a sleeping child, turning over the next room in response to its parent’s step.

Mr Darcy waited first upon those of his male guests who had chosen to ride in carriages back to the house, and who had retired to the billiards room to enjoy their cigars away from the babies and fresh plaster of the salon, but very soon all the gentlemen joined their wives, and the conversation was adapted to the former’s discussion of the prospect of whether there might be any shooting left at this time of year. Lady Catherine, a widow who professed her disinterest in any form of hunting that did not allow her to ride horseback, took the opportunity to corner the recently bereaved Lady Elizabeth, and, after a very brief expression of sorrow as the the death of that lady’s long-estranged husband, began to enquire of her as to her present situation, as she had heard that Lady Elizabeth had lately spent rather less time at Chatsworth than she had previously. These questions were put so bluntly that Lady Elizabeth appeared to be in danger of being made to give an actual answer to Lady Catherine’s questions about her peculiar station, and the former began to acquire a look which suggested unbecoming frankness would soon be present on _both_ sides of the conversation. This in turn caused the Duke, who had been endeavouring to respond as lazily as possible to thepolite conversation of his host, to attempt to rescue Lady Elizabeth without actually seeming to intercede, though this task was made difficult by the manner in which Mr Darcy, without ever being so uncivil as to cut his guest, managed to contrive to never have to actually speak to Lady Elizabeth, his opinion of her position being one of the few points on which he could be relied upon to agree about with his sister-in-law.

In the room adjoining that which the adults sat in, a game of catch-and-kiss had sprung up between the younger children present, excepting of course the guest of honour. The game was slightly unmatched, for on the feminine side were the Lady Caroline Ponsonby, her Chatsworth cousins Ladies Georgiana and Harriet and their companion Miss St Jules, and on the masculine side were the two younger Ponsonby brothers, Master Clifford, the Marquess of Huntingdon, and Miss Darcy’s brother, Fitzwilliam. On the surface the numbers were equal, but as the ladies had the dual disadvantage of being rather older than their regular male playmates and furthermore either their cousins or siblings, all of their attention had been present focused on their young host, who was of an age with the two younger girls and had a sort of delicate prettiness that promised to make him handsome in later years. He had soon been chased into the centre of the room, where he turned warily from one guest to another while the girls circled him mercilessly, their daemons feinting at him to try to make him run in one direction or other. His own dæmon, who had shaped herself into a quick-footed hare shortly after the game began, mirrored his steps. He had been agreeable enough when the game had first been proposed, but as it had gone on he had begun to be disconcerted, both by the way the girls would run away giggling and confer with each other after kissing him, and by the way they all insisted on their turn, so that after one had kissed him and made him ‘it,’ he would be harried into the arms of whichever girl they had elected to go next.

Anne de Bourgh, who had been coaxed into joining the walking party and now looked rather whey-faced, had thrown herself in a sulk onto one of the unused kissing couches scattered about the salon, and was shortly joined by her cousin Richard, after a few chivying looks had been directed at him by his father and older brother. He endeavoured with great patience to make conversation, but it was to little avail, since she several times nodded as if on the verge of sleep, and at length they were joined by Lady Georgiana, who was by then rather out of breath and less interested in harrying her host than were her sister and companions. Richard’s long-suffering indignation at his cousin’s inattention was perhaps unfair, for she had been afflicted by the same illness that had in a single stroke carried off her father and made her an heiress, and her mother professed her not entirely recovered, but the general opinion of her cousins was that her natural irritability had been augmented by her illness rather than generated by it, and so they were little inclined to give her quarter on this account.

Lady Anne’s attention, which had been caught on occasion by this game, was momentarily drawn away by that same attention being paid to it by the Duchess. The latter enquired as to whether Lady Anne had formed any special plan for her son’s future, to which Lady Catherine replied that it was their family’s hope that their children would make a jointly eligible match. The Duchess pulled a face at this, which was rendered charming by her features, and laughingly declared that it was a poorly thought out plan, for _she_ had never yet met the man who wished to marry a lady who shared a name with his mother — or indeed his sister — and slyly added that it was fortunate, was it not, that there were no Harriets amongst the Darcys, for that name had come to Derbyshire via the Duchess’s sister. Lady Catherine and Lady Anne both examined the Duchess’s younger daughter, whose plump features were at that moment contorted in the fury so often found in aimlessly clever girls, and Lady Anne remarked that would not wish her son settled too young, which might be a concern with a girl of his own age, having rapidly concluded to herself that as this category covered both Miss de Bourgh and Lady Harriet such a statement so could not be construed as giving preference to either of their mothers. Both parties looked inclined to do battle nevertheless, but this was averted, to Lady Catherine’s satisfaction, by the frayed temper of the seven year old Marquess of Hartington, who had begun to despair of ever regaining the attention of his cousin Lady Caroline, and accordingly gave shrieking vent to his feelings, his dæmon accompanying him in leathery percussion as a large and clumsy fruit bat, hanging by one foot from the button of his skeleton suit and flapping arrhythmically.

Caroline St Jules rushed to comfort him with great ostentation, even as Lady Caroline laughed at him, and Lady Anne, without at all meaning to, declared that she certainly could not countenance a Caroline as a daughter in law.

‘No, indeed,’ agreed the Duchess, eyeing this pair with distaste.

Fitzwilliam, sensing his chance to escape from a larger and louder company than he was used to, promptly darted from the room and made for his mother, edging his way into the circle of security formed by her perpetually stalking dæmon, who did not deign to sit in company, and proceeded to lean against her with all the possessive habit of one who had spent eleven years as her sole charge. She patted his shoulder in gentle remonstrance, and he straightened up a little reluctantly, bowing to their guests as Inès, ermine-shaped for courtesy, leapt up to his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

He stepped a little closer to the Duchess to examine his sister, whom she still held, and enquired as to whether Georgie was quite well, holding out his dæmon to examine the flickering caterpillar form of her own with some concern. The little dæmon, still sleeping, hunched sluggishly away from this examination, and her anxious brother was informed with great assurance that such behaviour was quite natural in a dreaming dæmon of such tender age. He looked doubtful at this, and the Duchess leaned closer still, inviting a whispered confidence to which Fitzwilliam laughed and then looked guiltily at his mother, who in turn looked quizzically at them both. The Duchess then jokingly declared that she had discovered the source of the problem — the poor infant suffered from too great an excess of names, which she did not know what to do with, though her brother had gallantly attempted a remedy. The Duchess would resolve the issue by giving Miss Darcy’s dæmon Louis-Alexandre a more sensible use-name, as was her right as his godmother. Sandy would do well enough until he was grown bigger, would it not?

This was not calculated to please Lady Anne, who had granted the name, or Lady Catherine, in whose honour it had been given, but while Lady Catherine was considering how best to respond to being pushed aside in such a fashion, other opinions were offered to soften the blow. ‘It is a very _long_ name, Mama,’ said Fitzwilliam, who had been reprimanded rather too many times for signing his name Fitzas a young scholar.

Lady Anne sighed at this, and agreed that Sandy would do, at least within the family, and received solemn assurance in turn that Miss Darcy would not, at least, be _introduced_ by any such use-names. Lady Georgiana, having observed her brother’s tantrum with many sighs, had by then seized one of her brother’s hands and entreated her sister to do the same, and coaxed him, sniffling defiantly, towards their mother, who opened her arms hopefully. He had been a most affectionate infant, but as soon as he had been weaned a violent quarrel between his parents had precipitated his mother’s solitary departure from the family circle for over a year, and though the Duchess had often entreated the return of their closeness upon her return, neither maternal adoration nor reason had worked the same conciliatory magic upon her son that it had done upon her daughters.

What maternal affection could not provide, however, masculine company could. Abruptly aware of the attention of Fitzwilliam, who had been observing this display with baffled irritation, the young Marquess sniffled defiantly one last time, and made an effort to master his own emotion in the presence of the older boy. Lady Harriet, observing this, smiled rather gratefully at Fitzwilliam, who looked embarrassed, and Lady Catherine, observing this, declared with a malicious sparkle that this was _exactly_ the sort of thing which they had been discussing earlier, when it had been decided that Fitzwilliam should attend a school in London.

Fitzwilliam, who had been standing close enough to his mother that she could place her hand in the crook of his arm, stiffened abruptly, and Inès sprouted spines, her offended hedgehog shape resembling nothing so much as an epaulette upon his shoulder.

Lady Catherine continued that they had all been most pleased by the idea, and Mama had said that he should be able to come and stay at Kent with her and his cousin Anne — would not that be pleasant?

Lady Anne, though sympathetic to his agitation, did not extend her indulgence so far as to allow an ill-bred lack of response, and prompted him accordingly. He, without looking directly at either of them, busied himself with collecting his dæmon and tucking her into the wide cuff of his sleeve, and said that it would, no doubt, be very nice. Then, with barely a moment’s pause, he asked if he might show the Marquess the succession houses, assuring the Duchess that they had passed by earlier on the way back to the house, and it was perfectly warm there.

Permission granted for this, he left with speed that was almost graceless, talking absently to the Marquess of the sort of plants they would find there. The girls, after a hasty conference, trailed after in confusion.

The Duchess watched them go, her expression a little wistful at the speed with which her son was willing to depart, and then looked down again at the baby in her arms. ‘I have always thought Eliza a very pretty name,’ she said abstractly.

Lady Anne, who knew perfectly well that the reason for the Duchess’s long absence and the reason Charles Grey was no longer permitted to visit Chatsworth were one and the same, said nothing at all.

The Duchess was silent a little while, and then asked, rather low, if Lady Anne still maintained any connection in Denmark. This was not a very hopeful query, as such few connections as she possessed in that country had been formed many years ago in her childhood. The old Earl of Hartsworth, who had favoured diplomacy over parliament, and who had been disliked in that office by the king for his family’s Whiggish professions, had been sent to Copenhagen in the aftermath of the disastrous marriage between King George’s sister and his cousin, the young Danish king. The Earl had been indifferent to his female offspring, but this had not prevented him from taking his wife and their unmarried youngest daughter to his new posting, though his older daughter had not long left the family home, and by consequence Lady Catherine had suffered the lack of a confidante in the early years of her marriage even as Lady Anne had endured several years in the unfriendly atmosphere of a reactionary court that loudly rejected both the nation and modern philosophies of their disgraced queen. Lady Anne had returned to England as an adult with a proud, chilly demeanour and a dæmon who had taken the form of a long-haired Siberian tiger, a slight variation on the usual ‘Fitzwilliam’ tiger-daemons her family had produced so reliably for centuries.

That the Duchess would raise such a subject was a matter of some surprise, as few subjects could be better relied upon to call up pride and distaste within her host. The Duchess, however, was most effusive in her periods of anxiety, and so at the first expression of unhappy emotion upon Lady Anne’s face, she earnestly entreated her indulgence. She did not, she explained, ask upon her own account, but that of her dearnbrother. Earl Spencer had these past several years been installed as First Lord of the Admiralty, and his position had been threatened by the recent small mutinies in the navy. His was one of the few positions of influence still held in Whig hands, and so it was incumbent upon her out of patriotism as well as sisterly affection to assist him in any way. She had heard lately that the growing influence of the Danish navy had been attributed in part to their having got some cloud pine tar, which was said to have the most marvellous qualities, and would cause a ship almost to fly upon the water and had let them cross the Atlantic with almost astonishing speed. Could, would Lady Anne use her influence to learn if the English navy might somehow obtain such a specimen?

Lady Catherine scoffed at this, and suggested that the problems in the navy might be best resolved with more judicious and frequent applications of the lash. Her sister, however, was thoughtful. Cloud pine was, by tradition, the provenance of the witch tribes of the far north. To be sure, some of them _did_ live in the furthest parts of Denmark, but she had always heard that the greater part of their number were found in Lapland and Muscovy. She did not see, however, how tar from such a tree could be of use, for cloud pine in the hands of one who could not perform magic was no different to any other timber, and indeed often less useful since it could not be relied upon to grow straight enough for construction or burn in any useful way, and in any case the witches guarded their rights most jealously. She had heard a rumour that the dowager queen, the King’s stepmother, had sought some form of alliance with the witches, but had met with only limited success. She declared she would make enquiries, however, for whatever little good it might do, and was rewarded with many thanks.

Not long after this the party broke up, for the sun had begun to be very low in the sky, and the Duke preferred to return home rather than remain as an overnight guest. Farewells were made at great length, the children retrieved from the succession house, and both Fitzwilliam and the Marquess were chided for dirtying their good clothes, although not very severely. The Marquess, grinning broadly and showing mismatched front teeth, had clutched a pot containing a carefully transferred specimen of fern from New Denmark with as much reverence as if it had contained the rarest jewel in a sultan’s treasure cave, a gift he had received with more enthusiasm than good manners.

Lady Anne gave her children into the overdue care of their nurse, and retired to her own sitting room, weary and satisfied in equal measure. An hour or two was enough to revive her, and, wishing see her children before supper, but not wanting to pull them from the nursery again after a long day, elected to look in on them instead.

She entered the room quietly, not wanting to risk waking them, but, to her surprise, found both her children alert. Fitzwilliam, who had not heard her approach, was leaning over the cradle, Inès balancing on the railing in the shape of a fishing cat, her tail hooking this way and that, both of them issuing whispered encouragement to the baby in tones too low to comprehend. Inès, turning as neatly as a hairpin, attempted another shape, also a cat, and purred, while Fitzwilliam explained how easy it was, and then declared in mock crossness that if Georgie was going to be contrary, she might as well go on and have a cat dæmon. Lady Anne laughed at this, and boy and dæmon looked up at once, Inès falling gracelessly from her perch in surprise. She sprung up again, reformed as a half-grown tigress that was as predictable a symbol of ingratiation as could possibly be managed, and greeted Lady Anne’s dæmon with great formality.

Lady Anne narrowed her eyes at her son, and asked what it was he wished.

He hesitated but a moment. ‘Must I go to school in London?’

She considered this. ‘Perhaps. I have not yet spoken to Papa about it. I do hope you have not set yourself against it without even considering the matter. I am very much in favour, you know. Richard is to go to school next year, since Risingham is to take their tutor with him to the Continent. You might conveniently attend the same school, and perhaps even the same lessons.’

‘Unless the war starts again,’ added Fitzwilliam.

‘Perhaps,’ said his mother, again. ‘But France is not all of Europe, you know. There are many places that it would be worthwhile for a young man to travel to, and it is much easier to travel long distances when one has become accustomed to travelling short ones. And it is best for a person to travel when they are young, and do not have so many responsibilities to hold them in one place.’

This was no great inducement. ‘I should rather stay here, and be convenient to you and Georgie. And I think it would be very unkind to Mr Huxley —’ this gentleman was his primary tutor, ‘to turn him out of his employ, only on account of my wanting to see Richard. Papa said he was very pleased with my last report.’

This entreaty was as much self-interest as selfless concern, and did not hold much sway with his mother, who was rather more used to the habit of re-assigning those in her employ. ‘Say rather that you should like Georgiana and I to stay here and be convenient to _you_ , my dear. Your place at Pemberley is assured forever, and indeed will one day be required very constantly. My place, however, was at Hartsworth with your grandfather, and then on the Continent. Now it is here with Papa, and one day it will be the dower house, when you are old enough to have a wife. Georgiana, too, will go and live with her husband when she is grown up, wherever that may be. You must face the future with as much resolve, as I know you to be capable of doing.’

Fitzwilliam scowled at this, burying his hand in Inès’ indignant ruff. ‘I won’t make you live in the dower house. I won’t marry anyone who _would_ , either.’

Lady Anne admired this ferocious picture, and then quite spoiled it by ruffling his dark hair, so like her own. ‘You, sir, will not be able to _stop_ me. I shall go and be mistress of my own domain. I know better than to scrap with young ladies when they have set their mind to something, and so ought you.’

**Author's Note:**

> This started with suggestion from the lovely regina-del-cielo, whom I’ve been brainstorming details with on tumblr, that polite sniping between Lady Anne and the Duchess of Devonshire over whether Anne’s children should be addressed by nicknames should be made into an actual fic (the duchess, a woman after my own heart, gave everyone stupid convoluted nicknames, including one suitor whom she referred to as The Eyebrow).  
> As such, many of the characters mentioned in this fic are real historical figures who are too dead to complain about my character treatments of them. This includes Joan Waste, who was a real person who was put to death in Derbyshire in her early 20s during the marian persecutions under Mary I. The true story of her life and death is rather sad and gruesome, unlike the version I’ve made up for this fic.  
>   
> Then it turned in to a whole lot of research about what it could actually mean for a kingdom (ie Northern England) that regarded itself as _in theory_ under the authority of an absent, immortal, probably heathen* medieval king to be managed _in practice_ by an early modern Anglican constitutional monarchy and parliament. After a crash course in the history of religious schisms and English land rights courtesy of wikipedia, the eventual course I went with is that for the purposes of estate inheritance Northern England is three feudal states in a proto-democratic trenchcoat and that Pemberley is, technically, held per baroniam (ie by right of personal military fealty to the king) rather than, say, in fee simple (Netherfield by Bingley’s landlord) or fee entail (Longbourn). In practice this mostly means accountants make a lot of money because half the country operates on a system of payments in lieu of military duties and inheritance/death fees while the other half is on its way to to something resembling modern land taxes, so calculating who owes what when is an absolute nightmare.  
> The entirely made up heretical autocephalous church of northern England is an elaborate excuse to make the Darcys more Catholic in their naming habits than your average Georgian CoE family, because I really wanted a reason to name Darcy’s dæmon after St Agnes (though, naturally, the Darcys have given their daemons french names since the first of them jumped off a boat during the Norman invasion. Heritage is important). Autocephalous, for those wondering, was nicked from the Greek Orthodox Church, and refers to a church that is self-governing and doesn’t answer up the chain to a higher church authority, although I’m not sure of the antiquity of the term in Greek as unfortunately I don’t speak or read Greek myself.  
> Re: the bells. I’m not a mathematician, and apparently the longest ever extant was 19 hours on 8 bells. I figured that since bells in JS&MR are both pro- and anti-fairy, church bells ringing mathematical figures would be anti-fairy spray. I did some probably dodgy calculations on the basis that if it took an hour to ring approx 2122 permutations on 8 bells, then (9!=362880)/2122= 171 hours, which is slightly over than seven full days assuming the bells rang constantly day and night. Method ringing (ie mathematical calculations of possible combinations) apparently became popular in the seventeenth century as a result of the publication of _Tintinnalogia or the Art of Ringing_ (Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman) and _Campanalogia_ (also by Stedman).  
>   
> *Per _JS &MR_, John Uskglass was not baptised prior to his abduction into fairy and subsequent conquest of the north, and later he allegedly encountered/argued with angels, demons, and saints without suffering any kind of road-to-Damascus conversion. Given the way humans are referred to as ‘christians’ in JS&MR regardless of religious belief, ‘non-christian’ doesn’t quite work in context. I’m assuming the reference to his attending mass in _John Uskglass and The Cumbrian Charcoal Burner_ is a later cultural-norms addition to a folk tale.  
> Finally, all credit to Anghraine over at tumblr, whose about _Pride and Prejudice_ content is always excellent. Her meta about the Duchess of Devonshire being Georgiana Darcy's godmother was the basis of this whole fic.  
> As always, you can find me at ellynneversweet.tumblr.com


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